Marvel Cinematic Universe, Phase 4 & Beyond (and a chance to change your vote)

loved multiverse of madness for the most part even though the script/plot seem worse and worse from a distance. give me necromancy and eyeballs popping out of sockets and my standards lower accordingly

^^ otm

i've aggressively tried to ignore every marvel property over the past five-six years but pretty much every major character came off like they'd been written into a corner, not just wanda (though especially wanda)

Loved Ms Marvel. So much fun and some genuine irl lol moments.

Really like how they use the TV shows to try things they probably couldn't do in the movies.

I enjoyed the continual cartoons.
& liked the fact that this was a high school age muslin girl from a pakistani background. For ages I wondered if there were any US population from the subcontinent since they seemed to get absolutely zero coverage. I was actually thinking nobody from that background there when I was a teen, surprised i hadn't met any there when visiting my UN dad. Though maybe him being Kenyan was significant. Now have heard about historic discrimination against what would then be Indian populations dating back to the 19th century in US & Canada. & popular tv appearance has grown over last couple of decades. Still pretty marginal from what current US tv I see but there actually are characters appearing from the various countries around the area that didn't seem to be represented at all before.

I enjoyed this and want more as soon as the episode ends so have to wait til next week . Need to work out how she got to become a Ms Marvel if Carol Danvers exists or is she off on the far side of the universe.
This was fun.

Looking forward to seeing what they did with She Hulk cos I do enjoy Tatiana Maslany.

Now got to think. is the family overly stereotyped. Are these character types overly white gaze. Is the comic and the tv series both written by somebody from a background with the right gaze. Appears to be , so hope it doesn't come across as overly catering to misunderstamdomg amd hope they keep the balance right.

Seemed to be handled quite well I thought but is that from an external gaze.

I was just thinking there was a cliche in the States that people would continually ask black English people to stop putting on the accent. Think this was because there was little UK fictional tv with black characters before a certain point too. So not sure if I was just not seeing Indian characters on US tv that wasn't getting to the UK

This is India-specific, but there's an infographic here:
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/indian-immigrants-united-states-2019

ok that's interesting. My teens would be between 1980 and 1990 so I wasn't as wrong at the time as much as i had assumed. THought it was just deep under representation connected to racism but it was minority population due to the same. LIke I know there was some population around for a long time but seems like they clamped down on brown people who didn't come in as their supposed commodity. Not great legacy, hope tehy are flourishing now.

Now got to think. is the family overly stereotyped. Are these character types overly white gaze.

not pakistani or american, but this western-educated muslim girl thought the depiction of the khans felt fairly authentic - Quranic verses as home decor is v real, and so is having that one sibling who is super religious but pretty cool at the same time

really liked this - thought the pacing felt a bit weird/rushed, but it worked with all the gimmicky camerawork and animated background visuals

Giddy fun, I’d say, with many resonances that others would feel more deeply than I ever could.

I wondered if there were any US population from the subcontinent

I have a weird view of this because I grew up in an extremely white town where essentially the only POC were the children of local doctors and faculty / grad students at the university and most of them were Indian / Pakistani / Sri Lankan. Like the only non-white kids in my grade consistently from kindergarten through 12th grade had parents who immigrated from india, and I know way more about hinduism than judaism, for example, because the one jewish kid moved away in 3rd grade.

Watched the first episode with my kids… I thought it was pretty good, and some of the touches were creative. As with Hawkeye, the acting felt like a weak point to me (I guess Marvel doesn’t focus on that too much) – her parents were good, though.

Bonus “Trust A Bro” truck sighting in the end credits…

Is the white kid in MsM canonical

Like, from the comic? Bruno is a character, yeah

(he’s different there, but so is Kamala)

Ty. I want the character to go away and focus on the fun friendship between the female leads is all

a friend who lived with me in Jersey City accurately noted that although there are no noticeable "filmed in Jersey City" shots, the _feel_ of the show is extremely accurate to JC. Fun fact, there's a reference to the street corner i once lived on, though the setting is entirely wrong.

Xp Does Marvel/Disney think it needs to have at least one prominent white male character to get that audience?

Hoping people are more enlightened. But is that a factor.
May affect how prominent that character is? Or he may already be a dynamic in the comics, though possibly for a similar reason.
Not sure how things like that work. Are kids still likely to go eurgh it's a girls' /boys' comic so I can't be seen with it. Or it depicts an ethnicity other than WASP white so it'll be marginalised.
Hope not.

Really hoping that it is becoming less of a thing that one might need to have a white character to get a white audience.

Seems a little archaic and if it was an invented new character inserted to do that a really bad step. |BUt wondered if it was still something deemed necessary by management when the comic book version appeared.

So interesting to see the sidekick being one of the very few white people in the episode this week. Most of the others were in the Men in Black group I think.
Still enjoying this greatly.

Hoping this is the beginning of something longer term for the younger cast. Have no idea what Asian shows are on US tv at the moment outside of this. Or characters in other popular tv beyond Silicon Valley and Master of None etc. Hope things are building from there though. Hoping more roles are going to people of the right ethnicity not white actors in make up or totally different ethnicities who the makers hope the audience won't notice. I'm assuming black characters in this are intentionally black.

Thought it was interesting Disney used MIA a few eps ago

Gosh the latest episode was so good. Could have just been a hang with the Karachi family episode alone and I would have loved it.

Well we got Thor coming up and all but meantime they're filming more Loki and the wide tie-ins and obscure characters? They're there.

i think they’re shooting loki by the noël theatre in london rn pic.twitter.com/dId6JUdKpx

— sasha 🇺🇦 (@LOVE1SNOTENOUGH) July 3, 2022

LA Times review of TLaT is lukewarm, though somewhat positive. Still theater-averse, will see it on blu in Sept or Oct. As a long-timer, anything big screen is compared to Nicholas Hammond spewing a rope net, so have yet to be roundly disappointed by a MCU film.

Seeing publicists comparing it with Batman and Robin to try and improve its reputation won't fill most people with hope (unless like me you love B&R).

xp That’s a well-written review; I like Justin Chang. And lukewarm for sure

Having just seen it: utterly ridiculous and therefore perfectly enjoyable, a wonderful B-movie and I mean that as praise. Plus, very metal.

circling back to say the most recent ep of Ms Marvel was terrific, especially the casting of her great great grandparents just wow. I wasnt aware of Fawak Khan or Mehwish Hayat before now but LORD no wonder they are such stars in Pakistan: holy wow the camera loves them. Also they should do something together ASAP because whoa chemistry much u guys?

also similar to the way Moon Knight portrayed Egypt, props for not putting a piss-yellow filter over everything in Karachi & letting all of its wonderful color & vibrancy come through

*Fawad

pretty great yeah.
THis isa 6 episode run isn't it? Just seems like there's a lot to do with one episode left if so. Does that mean we are almost bound to get a series 2 please.
Am enjoying this. & hope it does mean things don't need to be quite so eurocentric. Has the costume character actually got a name yet. Was wondering how she could be a Ms Marvel at the same time Carol Danvers was known to be, or has she vanished as far as people stuck on earth are concerned? Like to the far reaches of teh Universe or something.

Hope the standard for MTVU remains as high and growing.

Carol Danvers is Captain Marvel and always has been in the MCU; she was only ever Ms. Marvel in the comics

Really enjoyed Thor. Taika seems to truly understand its inherent ridiculousness, but also when and when not to lean in. Bits of it reminded me of Gilliam's "Baron Munchausen.'

Od's Blood! Hath ILE no thread for anticipation of THOR 4? Verily?

I have to alert everyone that the making of Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness special on Disney+ is hosted by Bruce Campbell.

they've officially reached the point where I was able to guess halfway through the movie exactly who would show up in the mid-credits sequence

the ending was kind of rote and corny, but there were some moments here and there. the highlight of Thor: L&T for me was probably the fast-paced battle scene with flashes of color. somehow managed the frantic quick-cut style reminiscent of a Michael Bay movie while still being legible, possibly because the camera wasn't two feet away from the characters

Ms Marvel ended very well. Great series I thought and I am really looking forward to the movie now. And boy were they dropping hints left and right at the end there (and not hiding it).

While there was a lot to like, I didn't think so much of the end of Ms. Marvel and it became my least favourite of the Disney+ MCU series. I thought the series started out pretty great, although I wasn't too keen on having another coming-of-age teenage girl with an overprotective/controlling family story following Encanto and Turning Red, this was very much saved by having a great cast, very well done setting/depictions of culture and a very unique, distinguishing style (drawings and emojis coming to life).

The great cast, especially Iman Vellani herself, and the cultural stuff stayed strong until the end. However, that style thing was hardly present anymore - maybe in the last 2 episodes only with the school board planning?

It was the story which got me less and less invested. I didn't think the Djinn were very compelling villains to begin with and the shift to Damage Control as the opposition in the final episode also fell quite flat to me - it seemed like such unnecessary escalation. I did like a lot that Sheikh Abdullah said "If someone treats you as their enemy, that doesn't give you the right to treat them as yours.", but I feel they could have done more with this (especially seeing as Damage Control are not 'villains'; wouldn't have bad intentions)
I also thought that the series featured not one but two drastic U-turns which weren't done very well. One: the Djinn being sympathetic, asking Kamala for her help, then Kamala saying 'Well, it might be dangerous, I have to think about it' being taken by Namja as 'What? She won't help us! We're going to kill her!'; the other: Kamala's mother (and other relatives)' shift from being overprotective to over-supportive.

Mixed feelings regarding Bruno's reveal in the final scene. An intriguing setup with a very cool music effect, but it didn't seem all that dynamic to me. So I take it that Bruno is a typical old-school Comic Book scientist who is an expert on all fields of technology, biology and chemistry? Seems strange that he would be able to discover these details.

Not a big gripe, but I still wouldn't know exactly why they opted to change Ms. Marvel's powers to a purple display version of Quasar (who, admittedly, is a white/yellow display rip-off of Green Lantern).

All that said, I am looking forward to seeing more of the character in The Marvels.

Thor: Love & Thunder on the other hand got very high marks from me. Absolutely loved it. At times they went a bit over the top with cracking jokes and being silly throughout everything and despite everything, but I didn't really mind as I had to laugh a lot and the movie completely landed with me with a downright beautiful finale (and a post-credit scene fulfilling a long-time wish of mine).

Agreed about Ms. Marvel. The storytelling was extremely weak but the show was saved primarily by its dedication to the focus on family and culture.

Of all the sloppy issues it had in the story I agree that the worst of all was “help us get home” “ok this a lot let me process it” “ok we waited literally 100+ years so we really are anxious to finally leave but hey another day should also be pretty trivial I suppose” “cool cause my brother is getting married like tomorrow so maybe we circle back right after that?” “What?! Fuck you we’re just going to kill you”

Humanizing them in their introduction and then suddenly turning them into ruthless one dimensional goons for the rest of their appearances just because of a tiny scheduling delay for a pretty understandable reason. There were better ways to demonstrate their impatience and have it escalate into fun fight scenes.

So Marvel went all in on announcements, huh?

But no mutant stuff, huh?

(didn’t mean to echo yr “huh”)

Okay, that last Phase Six film is exactly what I'd been expecting/hoping that all of this multiversal nonsense would lead up to and I'm re-psyched about the MCU. Not that I expect the movies to top the comics (that particular storyline and the build-up to it being among the best mainstream comics of the century imo) but still. It gives the sense that there actually is a bigger plan.

Too bad Hasselhoff’s aged out of playing the Beyonder.

can someone summarize so that i dont have to sit through a powerpoint please and thank you #lazy

https://www.indiewire.com/2022/07/marvel-comic-con-announcements-whats-next-for-the-mcu-1234744167/

ty

Okay, that last Phase Six film is exactly what I'd been expecting/hoping that all of this multiversal nonsense would lead up to and I'm re-psyched

……..when is Phase Six

It's after Phase Five but before Phase Seven.

this is everything that's wrong with marvel (there shd be no phase five)

Phase 4: Ants, Man